Introduction
Seattle to Los Angeles to Houston to Tulsa
Oklahoma
Oklahoma City to Seattle

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I have not really added this to my bucket list but I have an unofficial challenge to visit all 50 states in the USA. Slowly but surely I am ticking them off. Last Year was Alaska, the year before, Kansas and Missouri. I had two options for this year. If I was going alone, it was going to be Oklahoma, if I was going with Heidi, it would be Iowa and Nebraska. Well things didn’t quite work out for a trip to Iowa, so it was just going to be me and that meant Oklahoma.

Getting one way to Oklahoma was going to be easy as Alaska has just started service to Oklahoma City. I had enough points for a one way flight. I also had some expiring Aegean points leftover after my trip to Frankfurt, so that was something I started to look at. While playing around on United’s website one day, I actually found that they fly a 787-9 from Los Angeles to Houston and thus this whole trip fell into place.

I went back and forth about going or not for quite sometime and I can tell Heidi got sick of me trying to work it out. So eventually she just said yes and that was it, I was off! Booking the Alaska flight would be easy, the United flights, not so much. I couldn’t get any decent flights into Oklahoma City to work at all for the days I needed, even reversing it did not work. So I tried a different tactic. Tulsa is about 100 miles from Oklahoma City so I checked out one way Car Rentals and they turned out to be cheaper than just a one day in OKC. So I started working flights into Tulsa and they would work (better than what OKC would actually). So I called up Aegean and they could see the flights but then the fun began. First quote of 200 Euros in Taxes. PASS! Asked them to Recalculate since the taxes should be about $20, and she wouldn’t budge. Hang Up Call Again! Again could see the space, taxes worked out correct, however this time she would not allow the three segments I wanted on the same ticket.. Dammit not this stupid clause again.

So I set back to working out the problem and found that if I ticketed the SEA-LAX separately on a paid fare, I still only spent less than $200 with the car rental, so I went with it. I called back and got it all worked out, then jumped online quickly to book the missing flight pieces. Ok so the flights were set. I booked in the car rental (after a little while playing with rate codes) and got that sorted. I then used up some of my remaining Club Carlson points (again leftover from Frankfurt) to book in a hotel. I went with the cheaper of the two hotels on offer in Tulsa because it seemed to have more around it.

Although this was going to be a quick trip, it sure was going to be an experience. I know Heidi was not looking forward to losing me from home for just a night, but I was excited to get back up in the air for some good old fashioned fun. A new state, a couple of new airports, a new plane and some new services to bring it all together. Sounds like fun right?…. Just wait.